Hunting Season (14 page)

If the undertaker was put on the defensive by the sheriff's demeanor, he didn't show it. Leaning against the counter, casual in khakis and a pink Izod shirt, he smiled at Clintus, his teeth like aged ivory piano keys in the dusty light of the shop.

"Well, sheriff, I've got a natural interest in what happened to my brother, now don't I?" he drawled. "Seeing as Herm here was the last person to see him alive, I wanted to have a word with him. That makes sense, doesn't it?"

Barnette's questions weren't meant to be answered and the sheriff didn't try. Looking beyond Raymond's insolent slouch, Clintus said, "That right, Mr. Thorton, you saw Doyce that night?"

"No!" Had Herm been an actual instead of a virtual mouse, he would have squeaked. Locked in the trappings of man, he just sort of gasped, then scurried from one end of the counter to the other. Finding the way out blocked by Anna, he scurried back nearer the known evil of Raymond Barnette.

"No," he repeated. "I never saw Doyce—"

"Heard him then," Barnette interrupted with a wave of the hand as if it were the same thing.

"No!" Herm said and this time he did squeak. "I never talked to him. I just left that message on his machine. That's all."

"Okay. Okay. The last one to talk to him." Barnette seemed fixated on this last-to theme.

"I didn't
talk
to him," Herm said desperately. "He wasn't there. He didn't answer. I just left a message that's all. I swear."

Anna watched Thorton's disintegration with annoyance. It would be nigh unto impossible to read anything of value from Thorton's reactions now.

Pity the people of Natchez if they elect Barnette sheriff,
Anna thought.

Clintus broke in. "Settle down, Mr. Thorton. Ray, we need to ask this gentleman a few questions. It won't take long—" This was to Herm, and he looked ever-so-slightly comforted by it. "But I know you're a busy man, and I don't want to waste your time."

Barnette lounged against the counter, making himself more comfortable. "I'm in no hurry, sheriff. Got all the time in the world."

Anna could see Clintus coming to a boil. She didn't have all the time in the world, and she was sick of watching the unfolding drama of local politics. Stepping into the cramped playing area, she took stage.

"This is a federal murder investigation, Mr. Barnette," she said clearly. "We need to talk with Mr. Thorton. For the sake of all concerned, we'd like the privacy to do so."

Barnette stayed where he was.

"Go away," Anna said unequivocally.

No wriggle room left, Barnette smiled his oily smile and took an unhurried departure.

The second the door slammed on the undertaker's perfectly pressed trouser seat Herm Thorton began to babble. Anna couldn't tell if it was a gushing of relief because Barnette was gone or if he poured forth a wall of words to forestall any questions she or the sheriff might have.

"Raymond said poor ol' Doyce has passed," Herm gasped, his voice thinned from emphysema or fear. "He said it was murder. Somebody murdered Doyce. Why'd anybody go and do that? Nobody'd kill ol' Doyce. He was good people. He must of just ... Then he says I'm the last one to see him alive. I'm not. I didn't see Doyce alive..." Seeming to hear himself for the first time, Herm let his voice peter out. The desperate trancelike look cleared from his face, and he looked from Anna to Clintus. His mind finally engaged. "Not that I saw him dead," he amended. "No, sir. What I'm saying is—and what Mr. Barnette wouldn't hear—is that I never saw Doyce at all that night. I called him to remind him we were playing poker. But Doyce never showed up. That's all. That's all."

Herm's eyes flickered between Anna and Clintus. His delicate fingers patted a nervous little dance on the countertop. He wasn't merely nervous, he was downright scared.

Again Anna cursed Raymond Barnette. In playing detective, he'd muddied the waters. There was no way of knowing how Herm was normally, what scared him, guilt or the very natural terror of being treated as guilty of something by a dead man's brother. Especially if that brother buries people for a living.

Clintus said nothing and Anna admired his instincts. She didn't speak either. They stared impassively at Herm, waiting to see if Herm's nerves would shake loose something worth hearing.

They didn't. After a tense moment in which he began to skitter back and forth behind the counter in his small trapped animal persona, he started again to tell about the phone message.

The sheriff cut him off. "Where do y'all play poker?" he asked.

Thorton stopped the aimless movement and gave them a blank stare. His eyes were dull hazel, slightly bulging and looked to Anna to be full of tears.

"Whose house," Clintus clarified.

"Oh." The blankness cleared and Herm laughed, a rattling burst like the chatter of a chipmunk. He was relieved. He was on solid ground now. Anna wondered whether there'd been something to alarm him in the first half of the question or whether he was overjoyed at finally being asked something that related to reality as he knew it.

"Badger Lundstrom's," he said with his first sign of authority. "Bradford—we call him Badger. When he was a kid he badgered everybody near half to death. Still does." Again the chattering that passed for a laugh. "We play at Badger's house."

The phrase was so childlike Anna was hit with the image of aging boys still pretending, playing at soldiers and forts and cowboys and Indians.

"Who's 'we'?" she asked.

"Me, Badger, Martin Crowley and Doyce," Herm said promptly. Another question he was comfortable with. "But Doyce never showed up," he added.

"So you played three-handed poker all night?" the sheriff asked.

Anna wasn't well versed in the nuances of the game, but from Clintus's tone she deduced three-handed poker was not the ideal.

Thorton seemed thrown by the concept as well. The assuredness he'd so lately found deserted him. He skittered again, his small feet shuffling loudly across the rubber mat laid down behind the counter. This time he recovered more quickly. "Not all night. We couldn't really get going without Doyce. And we was kind of worried about where he was and all. We just chewed the fat for a while. Then went home."

"What time?" Clintus asked.

"Midnight." Herm was real clear on the time.

"You were worried about Doyce?" Anna asked.

"Real worried, yes, ma'am," Herm replied. The mixture of discomfort, unctuousness and sadness in his voice confused her.

"Did you call him again? Try and see where he was?"

Herm looked startled. A question he wasn't prepared for. "I didn't," he said finally. "One of the other boys might've."

The man was such a mishmash of emotions that there was little sense to his recital. Raymond Barnette had succeeded in getting him sufficiently stirred up with his "last seen alive" routine that the reactions Anna and Clintus were eliciting could be coming from anywhere in Herm's befuddled psyche. Anna gave up. For now. Maybe later, when the undertaker's influence had worn off, they'd be able to see the real Herm Thorton.

Clintus must have felt the same. He asked no more questions but requested and got the addresses and phone numbers of Badger Lundstrom and Martin Crowley.

Calmed by the knowledge the session was over and his interrogators were moving on to other victims, Herm hazarded a question of his own. "Ray said they found Doyce at that old inn there on the Trace. Was he just parked there in his car or what?"

The question sounded genuine. Herm didn't strike Anna as much of an actor—not enough ego, not enough control. She believed the man did not know where and how Doyce Barnette's body had been left.

"Something like that," she told him. They'd been so angry with the undertaker they'd let it splash over onto Herm Thorton. Anna took an even breath. Time to go back and ask the customary questions. "Do you know if Doyce had any enemies, anybody who'd want to hurt him?"

The question startled Herm, then offended him. "Doyce? No. There wasn't nobody didn't like Doyce. Oh, some folks had no use for him at all but that's not the same as not liking. There wasn't nothing not to like about Doyce."

"Was there anything to like?" Anna asked.

Herm had to think too long and it embarrassed him. "Doyce was just real easygoing. There just wasn't nobody minded having him around."

Acipher,
Anna thought, one of those people who by choice or genetics is incapable of stirring up much emotion. A strange sentiment of her father's floated into her brain: "People either love me or hate me but, by God, they know I'm there." It sounded like no one knew or much cared if Doyce Barnette was 'there.'

Yet he'd been found stripped to his underdrawers, the victim of what, on the surface, appeared to be a crime born of man's darkest and most twisted passions; an unholy hybrid of sex and violence.
Stripped to his underdrawers.
Suddenly that struck Anna as odd. Why not naked? That scrap of squeamishness or prudery didn't fit.

Clintus was talking. Anna dragged herself back from her private musings.

"Did Doyce have any friends or acquaintances you know of that were unusual in any way? You know, somebody he might have known that wasn't one of the regular guys. Somebody he kept kind of secret?"

Clearly Herm Thorton thought that was a stupid question but now that he was no longer under attack he seemed to want desperately to cooperate. Either that or he dearly hoped he could come up with an answer that would steer the questions away from him and his.

Honesty prevailed—or powers of imagination failed—and Herm shook his head sadly. "Doyce's been here his whole life," he said. "He don't know anybody but the rest of us."

Herm was done. Anna and Clintus took their leave. As she opened the shop door, from behind the racks and shelves, she could hear the telltale peeping of a digital phone as the numbers were punched in. Herm was in a heck of a hurry to call someone. Undoubtedly Badger and/or Martin.

Not an unnatural reaction. As her grandmother used to say, "One little cloud is lonely." Her father, more earthy by nature, said, "What's the use of being given a load of manure if you don't spread it around?"

Clintus and Anna climbed into the sheriff's car. The big sedan—a Crown Vic like the one Anna drove for the NPS but a newer model—had the ancient luxury of a bench seat. Clintus buckled himself in, then leaned back and blew out a sigh. Like a teapot, Anna guessed, blowing off steam.

"Ray Barnette's beginning to get crosswise with me. So far he's stepped right between the first couple folks we wanted to talk with and just royally screwed things up," Clintus said.

"Friends and family are usually who gets you in the end. We need to take a close look at brother Ray," Anna said.

Clintus thought about it for a moment. It wouldn't be the first time it had crossed his mind. "Ray inherits his mama's place now. Place has to be worth something. Two, three hundred acres. Probably going for—what—maybe a thousand an acre plus whatever that old house is worth. A quarter of a million's motive enough in my book. If Doyce had been found with his skull bashed in or a bullet in his chest I'd've been putting Ray under the microscope. It's the bruises from the straps, the underwear. That sexual or whatever angle ... I don't know. Doyce and Ray were brothers."

Homosexual, homicidal incest: it did seem a bit much. Anna couldn't say that she, personally, had seen worse but guaranteed somebody had. Any evil that could be conceived could be and usually was executed somewhere in the world. Man was the animal who created. Like the God in whose image he was supposedly made, he created his own heaven and his own hell.

"Raymond could have killed his brother, then set it up as a sex crime to throw us off," Anna offered.

"Those bruises were made while Doyce was still alive," the sheriff reminded her. "As easy going as Doyce was said to have been, I can't see him letting his brother truss him up like that for any reason I can think of."

"Right. Me neither."

"Darn it all to heck," Clintus said, and he slammed the flat of his hand against the steering wheel.

"Why don't you just swear," Anna said. "It'll make you feel better."

The sheriff shot her a look that told her he thought he just had.

"What?" she asked.

"Two things. Doggone it." He signed and began again. "Two things. One, if Ray had done it, he'd've made sure it didn't look like anything obscene, or tried to at any rate. It gets out that this was some kind of perversion—even if it turned out to have nothing to do with Ray—he'd lose a lot of votes. Folks down here don't want to vote for somebody who's got bad blood in the family. Not just a spot of mental queerness—everybody's got a
loony
cousin wandering around the delta somewhere—but a serious kind of sickness like this would be. You know, what with the homosexual angle and all."

Anna waited but Clintus seemed uncomfortable with telling her what the second thing was. "And," she said to move him along.

"The second thing's a bit trickier. Politics. I go and noise it around that Ray's a suspect in his own brother's death, it could look like I was just trying to get rid of the competition. He just now got on the docket. There may be a couple other candidates running for sheriff, but at the moment, it's just him and me."